Lost Boys

Very strange this shouod have posted last night--so I am posting today.

As I age, one of the greatest pleasures I experience is finding a quiet place and the getting lost in a novel. In the summer this place in on my driveway hidden behind my van; The van blocks me from direct the sunlight making this area a comfortable place with ample light to read. I thermal insulated mug of ice water and good book and I am set for hours. This was exactly doing yesterday afternoon trying to finish a novel I had been reading for three weeks when I was started out of my fictional psychosis by a human cry. A weird cry like he sound someone makes when they are listening to music on a good set of head phones and hey forget where they are, and they are so into the music they are listening to they start singing, loud, off key and committed to the piece. I was started but when I peered round the van I saw an un-kept adolescent wondering down the street.

Granted yesterday was a hot day, at least before the great winds cooled everything down but not hot enough for a lad to be as delirious as this kid was acting. At some point the wanderer saw me and ambled to where I was sitting and asked how I was doing. I was guarded in my response but indicated ‘ I was fine.’ I was reading a black hard back spy novel but the lad thought it was a bible when I assured him the book was not a bible, his eyes brightened and gave me a “high five”. Some how I had scored some points this kid. He then asked what magazine I read. Then I knew he was a sales guy, door to door one neighborhood at a time. I assured him I did not need any magazine but he pressed me any way thrusting a sealed in plastic ‘subscription list’. I gingerly took the document looking at it’s owner for the first time closely. A rambunctious, unkept gum chewing teen with bright intelligent eyes. I am sure a century or to earlier he would have been perfect in any of the Dickens novels. I watched him look at me, my yard and my house as we talked. I told him three times that I was not interested in any magazines—I am sure the lad had been schooled in the ‘three close sale”—but he backed away. The gleam however was still in his eye and then asked…” How’d did I get in that wheelchair”. I thought about stringing the kid along and launching into one of my favorite Viet Nam stories but decided the sooner this kid was out of my life the better we all would be. ‘ Motor cycle wreck” said and saw his yes enlarge to my surprise. He said that was too bad, and I said that that was cool it happened along time ago and that I was doing OK and tried to return to my book. Then the lad zinged me with a ball out of left field, I should have seen it coming but I didn’t. In a low voice, said from under his breath the kids asked,” You go any pills?”

I pretended I did not hear what he had said and said “What” know wing exactly what he had said. “Have you got any pills.” He responded again. “What kind of pills” knowing exactly what kind of pills he wanted: any kind one might need a script for. ‘You know…pain pills”. Then I feigned enlightenment. And informed the kid I was lucky. I had never needed heavy narcotics. He said he would buy what ever I had but I convinced him I was clean. The lad gave me another high five and was on his way, down the driveway and back out onto the street and soon he made a nother weird howl and another and soon he was joined by another adolescent searching for the rest of the pack of Lost Boys.